Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

this is the worst I have felt in four years

March 28th, 2011

Last week: doctor says he’s taking me off Effexor and increasing dosage on Wellbutrin, and it’ll be fine because they’re both SSRIs. I’m skeptical but decide it’ll be okay because he’s the doctor and I’m not, so he should know.

Yesterday: I start the switch and, about six hours later, I have a headache and feel oddly emotional–both cranky and weepy–but for the most part I’m okay.

Today: the headache is much worse, more a migraine really, and it’s hard to think and my throat feels tight and the emotions are worse, and as the day continues the symptoms start stacking up: I can feel my pulse in my forehead and I feel kind of nauseated, then I feel like I’m about to throw up or start crying, or both, and I feel really short of breath and my face is burning and then my co-worker tells me to go home and she’ll stay late for me and she’s really kind of pushy about it so I leave work and start crying on the way home and I can’t stop even though people are staring at me and I look up the meds and they’re not the same, though they’re almost the same–Wellbutrin is an SSRI and Effexor is an SNRI and Effexor is the one I quit taking.. And Effexor studies show a 78% chance of withdrawal symptoms with a long list of them, with the FDA listing about half a dozen as “severe.”

I called the doctor’s on-call number and left a long rambling number explainting that I can’t stop crying and I’m shaking and short of breath I’m dizzy and I feel like I’m going to puke. And I keep telling myself it’s all in my head and the answer comes back “OF COURSE IT’S ALL IN MY FUCKING HEAD. THAT’S WHAT A NEUROTRANSMITTER IS. IT TRANSMITS. BETWEEN NEURONS. IN THE HEAD.” And oh God I need an answer quick I am never taking Effexor again in my life I want to go on the other SNRI I read about that you can go on that you can be on awhile and go off that instead and it’s not nearly as bad.

update: It got worse. After all that there was the uncontrollable trembling, the sweating, the panic attack, the dizziness so intense that the EMTs had to help me down the stairs and outside, one in front holding on to me and one in back propping me up, and then at the hospital I vomited four times in a row, still trembling and sweating and crying, my hands tingling and my legs numb. One of the worst experiences of my life.

The doctor never called me back, which he explained the next day by saying that the previous day had been his birthday. He wanted to put me back on Effexor. I refused outright, telling him I’d never take it again. He wanted to know if it was “just because of the headache,” “just because of the nausea.”

Nothing about being completely incapacitated and put in the hospital suggests to me that “just” is a good way to describe what I was feeling.

I’m trying to arrange for a new doctor.

letter to the editor

November 26th, 2010

A machine gun?

A machine gun.

Tonight I quickly lost count of how many police cars sped past along the roads outside where I live, and after I saw that they were turning not in two directions but in three, it became obvious that they weren’t responding to an ongoing crime at a fixed location, but that they were searching for a suspect. For most of an hour police came and went: in GPD cars and SUVs, on foot, and one in a state trooper car. Once it got dark I decided that the excitement was probably over and that I could read about it in the morning.

I went to my bedroom and, shortly, noticed several flashlight beams moving about on the walls. I opened the curtains to the back door and that was when a policeman began shouting “come out NOW or I’m sending the dogs in!” I was stunned and thought he couldn’t possibly be shouting at me, but the room was lit and the yard was dark, and the police have the guns and the dogs, so I opened the door and went out on the back porch. There I could see that the police were actually between my place and the next, and that they were shining most of the flashlights at the back porch next door.

I’m no gun expert, but with a long body and a clip hanging down from the underside, curving away from the policeman holding it, one of the guns was obviously a machine gun of some sort.

The K9 was straining against the leash, a policeman shouting praise at it. The policeman with the machine gun had it pointed at the suspect crawling out from under the porch next door.

I’m curious why a handgun wouldn’t suffice. How many times could the police possibly need to shoot someone? Alternatively, how many people could the police possibly need to shoot at once?

minor observations on Dr. Who

October 13th, 2010

I started watching Dr. Who with the 9th Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, and have really come to like it. I’d seen parts of episodes before, years prior, while sitting down to dinner, and even the odd full episode, but with no frame of reference they didn’t impress me much (and, even with a frame of reference, I still can’t believe the TARDIS “falling through a crack in time” in that one Cybermen two-parter–utter baloney, that).

Some time towards the end of David Tennant’s tenure (near the end of Season 3, I think) I started watching the William Hartnell years, though slightly out of order. Netflix has the discs out of order, and the page I looked up which supposedly sorts it all out still has some of the discs out of order. So far I’ve seen the intro arc, the cavemen arc, the first Dalek story (when the Daleks and the Doctor first meet each other, and the Daleks aren’t constantly seething with rage), the one where they’re trapped on the TARDIS, the Keys of Marinus, and the Aztec arc. The Marco Polo arc should have been in there but wasn’t yet, leaving me a bit puzzled when Ian showed up at the start of the Keys of Marinus in an Asian outfit.

William Hartnell’s Doctor is, at first at least, apparently not very smart. The first person he outsmarts is a caveman, and (unless there’s a mystery in the Marco Polo stories) it’s not until The Keys of Marinus that he solves a proper mystery.

The Dalek arc shows The 1st Doctor susceptible to radiation poisoning though the 10th Doctor, in the episode where Martha and the hospital are taken to the moon, can absorb and discharge low level radiation at will.

The sonic screwdriver hasn’t yet made an appearance, unless it was the small pen flashlight that the Doctor gave Ian to use in the Aztec tunnel (Ian only used it as a flashlight; the Doctor didn’t mention any other capabilities, and only referred to it as “this”).

There has been no use of psychic paper yet. I suspect that’s something created for the 9th Doctor (and its use is inconsistent in the new series–the 10th Doctor used the paper, rather than the sonic screwdriver, to convince the double decker that he’d paid bus fare).

The studio sets are painfully obvious; people frequently are meant to be out of earshot of each other but plainly are not. Many of the backgrounds are obviously paintings, sometimes even with folds and drapes visible. Scenes of the TARDIS disappearing are plainly shot with models (and the Dalek city was obvious a model as well).

The pacing on these earliest episodes is abysmal–incredibly uneven, with a tendency towards the very slow.

Actors fumble their lines a lot, especially William Hartnell. I wonder if the BBC were so pressed for time and/or money that they couldn’t do takes until people got it right.

In the Aztec arc, some of the people pronounce Tlotoxl “tl-TOX-l” and others “l-TOX-l.”

The TARDIS has several rooms, not just the one.

The Doctor has, in just these few episodes, been puzzled over why the TARDIS does some of the things it does, and doesn’t seem to know how to work it very well. Yet, although he’s the only one working it, the ride is much smoother than it was (will be) with the 9th and 10th Doctors. (And the 11th Doctor indicates that rides in the TARDIS are always bumpy because it’s meant to be operated by an entire team of people.)

The Doctor has a last name, and a granddaughter!

The Doctor has, quite possibly, changed the course of history in the cavemen arc by showing someone how to make fire. Later in the Aztec arc he tells Barbara she can not stop the Aztecs from making human sacrifices, since nothing at all must be changed about history. Then later he makes a pulley to help open the tomb door, and he lets Cameca see him making the pulley although he knows the Aztecs didn’t have them and she recognizes it as something new and interesting.

So far in the early episodes there has been little in the way of ethical quandaries, though the writers came close with Autloc asking “Yetaxa” (Barbara) if she would save her friend and destroy the Aztecs. That’s only close to an ethical quandary because saving Ian wouldn’t actually destroy the Aztecs, since the series has given no indication that the Aztec gods actually exist and that they care what the Aztecs do. The ethical quandaries that the Doctor and his companions face are one of my favorite things about the latest episodes.

The Doctor starts off as really kind of a jerk, though he’s warmed up a bit by the Aztec arc (and does, at least a little, seem to regret leaving Cameca).

The Doctor doesn’t know his history and culture nearly as well as he does later–he does not, for instance, know that making cocoa and sharing it with Cameca is the same as proposing to her.

The Doctor and his companions know how to speak the Dalek language although the TARDIS has never encountered them before. The 9th Doctor tells rose that the TARDIS gets into the companions’ heads and that’s why they can speak languages they’ve never encountered–because the TARDIS has.

aches and maths

January 24th, 2010

3 x-rays of the left hip
3 x-rays of the left knee
1 person wishing for a lead apron, though he has
no plans to have children

good night and good luck

June 27th, 2009

Dell death throes
Dell desktop, 2000-2009
It took a kicking and kept on ticking.

Global Swarming

November 28th, 2008

It’s very crude (and short), but here‘s the game I’ve been writing as a way of learning Actionscript.  Kongregate.com wrote up some tutorials on how to make Flash games, and then held a contest for games entered based on the tutorials, so that was as good a hook as any to get started learning.

I spent about 11 hours on the game today, programming new features, fixing things and breaking other things, and got super tired of it.

I’ll probably continue working on it in a few days, adding the final boss, more enemies, tweaking the difficulty ramp, etc.